The New York Medical Record publishes an account of Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performing the first open heart surgery in the western hemisphere when he sutured a knife wound in a young boy’s heart. Dr. Hill was the father of Alabama politician and U.S. senator Lister Hill.

Listen: Click the play button below to hear Archives Staff discuss this event on Alabama Public Radio.

A meteorite weighing eight and one-half pounds crashes into Ann Hodges of Sylacauga as she rests on her living room couch. The event gave Hodges a severely bruised hip and instant celebrity status. The meteorite, the first one known to have caused injury to a human, is housed at the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa.

Adhering to President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction plan, the Alabama legislature ratifies the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, but with the caveat that such an action did "not confer upon Congress the power to legislate upon the political status of freedmen in this State." The 1868 legislature, adhering to Congress's more radical Reconstruction plan, would ratify the thirteenth amendment again, but without the qualifying statement.

Loraine Bedsole Bush becomes the first woman to head a state agency in Alabama when she is named director of the newly created Child Welfare Department. Long involved in state and national efforts to reform child labor laws, Bush was largely responsible for the establishment of the department.

The Alabama Highway Patrol, Alabama’s first statewide law enforcement agency, is created by Gov. Bibb Graves. The patrol originally consisted of 12 motorcycle officers. Today the Department of Public Safety has a staff of over 1,100 who are responsible for the highway patrol, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, driver’s license administration, and other support activities.